Integral BCS
Developing a Secure, Unified Portal & Management System for Building Control Services
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Background
Integral BCS is a registered Building Control Approver (RBCA) in England and Wales, providing building regulation approval and inspection services for construction projects. As a professional partner in ensuring compliance with building safety and regulations, they review plans, inspect work as it progresses, and provide guidance to reduce non-compliance risks. With increasing volumes of projects and regulatory obligations, Integral BCS was facing challenges managing project data across customers, documents, compliance workflows, inspectors, and invoices. Their systems were fragmented, manual in many respects, and lacked integrated visibility across locations and tasks.
Integral BCS needed a secure, scalable software solution to bring together multiple functions—customer management, project tracking, document control, invoicing, scheduling, task management, mapping and location services, purchase management, and reporting—into one unified web platform. They engaged 6B to design and deliver the system using PHP, with purpose-built web portals for staff and customers, to increase operational efficiency, improve transparency, tighten document control, and support their regulatory responsibilities.
The Need
Integral BCS’s existing workflows relied heavily on manual or semi-automated tools: emailed documents, spreadsheets, physical inspections tracking, separate invoicing tools, and disparate scheduling. This led to delays in project and document approvals, inconsistencies in version control, difficulty tracking purchasing and cost of materials, and limited oversight over where teams were on different jobs. Customers had little visibility into project status, document submission, or inspection scheduling. Integral BCS also needed to tie location data (maps, inspection sites) into their scheduling and project workflows so that inspectors could plan routes and time, and so that all parties could see where work was in geographic terms. Finally, reporting was laborious: pulling together data about how many projects in progress, outstanding documents, financials, inspector performance, etc., was time consuming and error-prone.
The Solution
6B worked closely with Integral BCS to design and build a secure, end-to-end portal system in PHP that consolidated all major operational functions into a single unified platform. The solution includes a customer portal, staff/admin portal, and inspector interface, each with appropriate role-based access, so that customers, site operators, inspectors, and head office all see and act on what they need but no more.
Within the platform, customers can log in to view their current and past projects, submit required documents (plans, compliance materials), track the status of inspections, see invoices and pay online, and receive notifications when action is needed. On the internal side, project managers can create and manage projects, assign tasks, schedule inspections, manage documents (with versioning and audit trails), and manage purchases associated with projects (such as materials, subcontractor costs), with invoices linked into financial workflows. Inspectors have mapping and location tools integrated so that inspection addresses and zones are visualised on maps, enabling routing and location-aware scheduling. All scheduling and task management is tied to time, location, and resource availability.
Reporting features were built to generate both standard and custom reports: project statuses, invoice aging, inspection performance, customer satisfaction, and workload by inspector or region. Documents are managed securely, with storage, version control, and access governed by user roles. The system’s architecture includes encrypted data at rest and in transit, full audit logs (who accessed/changed what, when), and strict permission controls. The development followed an agile approach with continuous stakeholder feedback, including site inspectors, project managers, customers, and admin staff, ensuring usability and compliance with building regulation requirements.
The Impact
Since deployment of the new platform, Integral BCS has experienced profound improvements in how they manage projects, interact with customers, and monitor compliance workflows. Projects move through stages more quickly: document submission, plan review, inspection scheduling, and approvals have been accelerated thanks to centralised document management and mapping-integrated scheduling tools. Inspectors are able to plan their days more efficiently, with fewer travel overlaps or wasted time, because locations are visualised and tasks scheduled with geographic awareness.
Customers now have much more visibility into their projects: they can see what documents are outstanding, upload them, view inspection timelines, and receive updates—reducing calls and emails asking “what’s happening?”. Invoicing and purchasing workflows are more accurate and faster: purchase orders tied to projects feed into invoices, and financial reports reflect real time data rather than end-of-month reconciliations. Staff spend less time chasing missing documents or following up tasks, freeing them to focus on higher-value work.
Reporting and oversight have become more reliable: head office can view live dashboards of project progress across all regions, inspector performance and workloads, outstanding tasks and financial metrics. This enables better resource allocation, earlier detection of bottlenecks, and improved decision-making. Security, audit trails, and clear versioning have reduced risk around document control and regulatory compliance.
Ultimately, the integrated platform has transformed Integral BCS’s operational model, improved customer satisfaction, reduced administrative overheads, provided better visibility and control, and positioned the business for scalable growth in response to increasing demand and regulatory complexity.